Bookslut

August 2009

An Interview with Jag Bhalla

Idioms
are turns of phrases or expressions unique to a language. They are extensions
of metaphors and similes, and often become immortalized as clichés. While they
add flair to daily speech, they can also be problematic to a foreign speaker.
The expressions are so tied within their own cultural connotations they sometimes
sound absurd in translation.

Jag Bhalla's I'm
Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears uses this absurdity to its advantage.
Illustrated by New Yorker Cartoonist Julia Suits, Bhalla catalogues and presents
1,200 idioms from 10 countries translated into English, and shows how playful,
poignant, and convergent languages are. After dipping into Hanging Noodles
(a Russian expression for "Believe me"), you begin to see, through language,
not only each country's individuality, but also their underlying commonalities.
If an American were to say, "Stephen Colbert makes me bang my butt on the ground,"
it would sound off-kilter, but after a while the French expression makes about
as much sense as "knee-slapping," "LOL," "rolling on the floor," or even "dying
laughing," which this book often made me do.

Jag Bhalla sat down with me, via e-mail, to discuss these often overlooked
nuances of language, linguistic convergences and divergences, humor, and the
simple joy of armchair traveling.

Please tell us about yourself and your background.

The most relevant part of my background is that I've always been fascinated
by language. For me a novel turn of phrase or a well-sculpted sentence can be
literally thrilling. I don't mean that metaphorically, I mean actual spine tingling
and a rush of the best kind of neurochemicals. But to answer your question more
conventionally, my education has (so far) been overly biased towards the inhumanities.
My work has been in design, film, technology and marketing and I'm very pleased
to now be a first-time author.

You are an extensive traveler, and all the material for this book was collected
during your travels. Where did you go; what did you see; what did you learn?

I have been lucky enough to travel but I'm afraid what lead you to ask this
question is an example of book "marketing license." Someone at National Geographic
put that sales-y text on the advanced reader copies but I made sure it wasn't
on the actual book. Unfortunately, the truth is a lot less glamorous. The expressions
were gathered via a form of armchair travel, specifically foreign language dictionary
diving. I love the idea that all books are a form of travel -- to another place,
to another time, to other worlds, to other people's shoes, or to another person's
mind.

If not physical travel, what specifically gave you the idea for this book?

The genesis of the book is a tale of two phrases.

Firstly, I heard a Russian explaining that when he wanted to say he wasn't
kidding, he would use the expression "I'm not hanging noodles on your ears."
A bystander reacted by saying that was ridiculous. To which I retorted, "I'm
not pulling your leg" isn't much less ridiculous. That exchange lead me to read
up on idioms and what I discovered was fascinating. Idioms are curious little
pre-solved language puzzles -- turns of phrase that require a turn of meaning.
We don't pay them much attention, but idioms are more important than we usually
realize. Steven Pinker believes we have as many idioms and stock phrases in
our long-term memory as we have words. Linguists classify both words and idioms
as lexemes (i.e., self containing units for conveying meaning). And idioms turn
out to be a crucial piece of evidence in the surprisingly heated and ongoing
debate on the evolution of language. I use that connection to discuss some origin
of language theories. Including theories known by folksy nicknames such as la-la
(from bird song), woo-woo (from broader sexual selection pressures), poo-poo
(cursing may have been the precursor), and tut-tut (in order to gossip).

Secondly, I was astonished (original meaning = struck by lightning) by something
Bob Mankoff (cartoon editor of TheNew Yorker and professor of
applied humor at Michigan University) said in a Charlie Rose Show interview.
He said he thought of "humor as a necessary counterweight to the hegemony of
reason." I use that as a running theme for the short lighthearted essays in
the book. I look at evidence from various fields, including linguistics, anthropology,
psychology, neuroscience and behavioral economics, all of which adds counter-weight
to the increasingly, demonstrably, inaccurate view of human reason that generally
dominates our discourse. Humor and much science can help us overcome some of
the most egregious errors of the Enlightenment.

Out of these hundreds of idioms, which one is your favorite and why?

Now that's a very tough question. The book contains over 1,200 idioms from
10 languages. It's impossible to choose just one (incidentally, there are many
idioms that capture the notion of the impossible -- e.g., French "to size the
moon by the teeth," Chinese "climb a tree to catch a fish," and Spanish "to
ask an elm tree for pears."). However, expanding your constraint a little, I
particularly like the more absurd idioms:

German: to live like a maggot in bacon= to live in luxury
French: to strike the 400 blows= to sow wild oats
Spanish: think one is the last suck of the mango=have a big head
Japanese: I'll make tea with my navel= that's laughable
Yiddish: onions should grow in your navel= a mild insult
German: to pull worms from the nose=to force to reveal a secret

And of course the title…
Russian: not hanging noodles on your ears=not pulling your leg

Let's talk about Julia Suits's illustrations. They bring your book whimsy,
and their very literal visual representations show the surrealism and absurd
nature of idiomatic language. How do you feel the visual "translations" of these
almost untranslatable expressions add or detract to the difficulty of understanding
them?

I was very lucky to be able to work with Julia Suits, who is the creator of
some of my all time favorite New Yorker cartoons. Her work is a very
important part of the book. As you point out, her intriguing illustrations are
a perfect fit for the humorous tone of the book. And they add greatly to its
browsablity, which was a key design goal. We wanted it to be a natural gift
book (I often take a book instead of a bottle of wine to dinner parties) and
hence to be ideally suited for serendip-ping. Julia's eye-catching illustrations
mean that anyone can pick the book up and flick through to very quickly find
something amusing or talk-provoking.

In your introduction to the book, you write: "Languages give their users
different lenses through which to view their respective corners of the world."
Based on the idioms in this book, what do you think readers can discover about
different cultures and their own?

There is much that readers can discover about other cultures, but I've tried
not to be too prescriptive about that aspect of the book. I include only a few
such observations in the chapter introductions and leave the majority of the
idioms to stand on their own. I love the thought that readers can discover their
own cultural connections, resonances, and meanings.

An example of an explicit observation that I make is the Japanese's closer
attention to detail in general and in facial expressions in particular. They
have an expression "to lower the outside corners of the eyes," which means to
look pleased. Though that seems not to make much sense to us, it turns out that
smile-ologists believe that that is the only reliable way to tell if a smile
is genuine (it's possible to consciously fake all other muscle movements involved
in smiling). Remarkably that's something we are mostly completely unaware of,
but which is baked right into the Japanese language. It's an example of what
the Japanese call "haragei" which means "visceral, indirect, largely nonverbal
communication." I quote an expert who explains that "Direct verbal communication,
the way we use it in the West, is generally shunned. Nuances, silences, gestures,
facial expression are much more important.… One Japanese can understand what
another is trying to communicate by closely observing posture, facial expressions,
the length and timing of silences, and the various 'meaningless' sounds uttered
by the other person."

What is next on the horizon? Will you continue to do linguistic based projects,
or do you have other things lined up?

One possibility is a sequel. I have many idioms in a database that weren't
used in the book. I'm also researching an idea, which I can't say too much about
yet. It does share some of the spirit of Hanging Noodles in that it looks
at something commonplace and accepted in our intellectual lives, but which upon
closer inspection, is demonstrably and revealingly mistaken. However, the opportunity
to do another book depends on the first one being, at least to some extent,
commercially successful!

To find out more about Jag Bhalla and I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears,
please visit www.hangingnoodles.com.

S.J. Chambers lives in North Florida. Her writing has appeared in Yankee
Pot Roast, Strange Horizons, Fantasy magazine, The Baltimore
Sun Read Street Blog, and Up Against the Wall. She loves to entertain
visitors at her online drawing room: www.sjchambers.org.